


holy

by Uthot



Category: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch
Genre: Angst, Fluff, M/M, Post-Canon, idfk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-04 09:08:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17301830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Uthot/pseuds/Uthot
Summary: His choices were never his choices. He knows that now (and Colin does too). At least he's getting used to the ride... for the most part.





	holy

**Author's Note:**

> i am deeply sorry

Repetition begets memory. Time bears to repeat itself eternally. Stefan was awake forever. Had been awake forever. Will be awake forever.

It was déjà vu at first. Eyeball sprites and video memory. Nail biting. Pills, ashtray, photo, Colin. Just a feeling, fleeting moments of apprehension.

Then one day, Stefan woke up and remembered everything.

Everything.

He woke up with sun coming through the blinds on July 9th, 1984. He woke up with the taste of blood in his mouth and code on the inside of his eyelids. Body paralyzed, Stefan's mind raced to recall it all, to order the events and make sense of them. Kitty. PAC? Thakur. Hacksaw. Film set? Acid.

"What a strange dream," he whispered to himself, throat dry. And he got up to start his day, memories already fading.

Breakfast? Yeah. Sugar Puffs or Frosties? Frosties. Thompson Twins or Now 2? Thompson Twins. In the building, up the stairs, through the door, and oh.

Oh.

It was not a dream after all.

Mr. Thakur came waltzing toward him (like he always had, and did, and will) and brought him over to Colin (Stefan, this time, without protest). And oh, what will he say this time? Stefan wondered in the haze of a fractured reality, haze of flashbacks, haze of stars and cereal and that fucking rabbit.

Colin glanced up, listless at first, then perplexed. "We've met before?"

Stefan blinked. Smiled. Words refused to form for him in that moment. The inside of his chest was tickled, his throat convulsed and before he knew it he was roaring with laughter high-pitched and jarring. Bent over, stomach-clutching, try not to piss yourself laughing. Vaguely he registered the sound of typing and conversation stop in the background.

When Stefan finally straightened with stray giggles and tears bubbling out of him, Mr. Thakur and Colin looked positively disturbed. Stefan had never seen that look on Colin's face, eyes wide and mouth hanging open. He loved it. He craved it.

"Yes," Stefan said, still grinning. "Many times."

Colin's mouth closed. Eyes focused. He inclined his head ever so slightly and regarded Stefan carefully for a moment before looking away and lighting his cigarette. He took a deep inhale and blew the fragrant smoke out like a prayer, right into Mr. Thakur's gobsmacked face.

"Well," he finally said. "That's certainly new."

\---------

And it was, though it wasn't, because

"time is a construct"

and as Stefan watched the words come out of Colin's tongue and teeth and lips he actually understood for once. Always did. Always will. He wondered how much Colin remembered in this timeline. When they met this time around he had simply said hey.

Sometimes it was hard to tell.

Other times it was easy, like when they smirk at each other with the gentle teasing expressions of well, look who it is.

Sometimes neither of them remembered, or only one of them. It was irksome to Stefan when he would wake up and realize in his most recent reality that he had lacked The Knowledge, just as he had in the beginning. He was annoyed to remember he had spent decades in prison scratching glyphs on his cell walls instead of just offing himself and starting over. Or that he had said yes to Thakur's proposal, bombed the game, and lived the rest of his life in mediocrity.

But it was, of course, written that way.

On the other hand, it was perhaps even less desirable when Colin didn't remember. Although those timelines were few and far between. Stefan would expect nothing less from him.

The only paths that really mattered, the ones that Stefan would live for immortally, were the ones with the both of them aware together. The constants, the cursed, the crazed. The seers.

Them.

And it was utterly fascinating to pick apart their existence together.

They'd spent lifetimes talking. In Stefan's bed, on Colin's couch, the park, the balcony, the flowerbed on top of a buried corpse. Those were the only times they could pass for alive. Really, truly alive.

"Why us?" Stefan whispered to Colin one night as they huddled in front of his computer. 

Colin's eyes stayed glued to the game. Click, click. Left. Click. Accept. Game over. He exhaled through his nose and turned his gaze to Stefan. "Why not?"

"But why?"

Eye roll. "Who knows."

"Someone."

"Or something."

A thoughtful hum. Buried nose in the crook of a neck. Arm coming up to wrap warm around a boyish shoulder.

And that's how a lot of the conversations went. Because the times that they didn't go like that they went off the rails. That's something Stefan came to realize over realities. He himself was definitely crazy. Obviously. But Colin was also, without a doubt, batshit fucking lunatic insane. Mad. Absolutely mental. Obviously. Like the time that he was

"-- gonna kill everyone, Stefan. I'm going to kill fucking everyone."

Pacing around his room wild-eyed, knocking over papers, lamp, chair. Combing that bleach blonde hair through frantic fingers. Strutting up to Stefan and snatching him by the front of the shirt and forcing him to look into his eyes, just as he had many times, in many different ways.

"Stefan, don't you see? We can get out, leave, end it, if everyone is dead we can end it, right? Don't you think? We could try. We should try." He was like Pax himself with those bared teeth and trembling muscles.

It was hard for Stefan to get scared much anymore, but this Colin was a little terrifying. He swallowed, gently putting his hands on top of the ones clenched tight around his collar. "You… you aren't making any sense."

"Yeah?" Colin's pupils were black holes. He was really fucking gone. "Who cares? Why not? Might be fun. Might feel like being God, like control, you understand?"

"No. I don't understand."

Colin smirked. Stroked a finger down his jaw. Released him.

"Then I'll make you."

And that was the first timeline that Colin ever killed him in. Which was only fair, really. Stefan ended up killing him sometimes. Less, now. But sometimes. 

And Stefan knew that he loved him when he woke up and thought sadly to himself that Colin was broken and could never be fixed. That something awful probably happened in the timeline before. That he would let Colin bash in his head again and again if it meant he would feel better. Oh.

Oh.

\----- ---- ------

New choices kept appearing.

They went different places together. Colin took him to a mediterranean place, a nice one, in a timeline where Stefan did not Remember. Colin always found that endlessly amusing because Stefan was the same nervous, stuttering boy he had first come to know. It made him a bit sad as well, because he knew that meant whatever end came to him, it would hurt a lot. But that's what made him new Stefan. And he liked him just as much. Crazy, content, and utterly his.

Of course, he still had a sadistic streak. So when he had an impulse to bend Stefan over the table after the meal, spilling water and getting food in his hair, he didn't even think of resisting.

And he was ever so pleased Stefan chose to kiss him back.

After that reality, he had that option a lot. When he didn't, he did it anyway. Even though one time Stefan accidentally pushed him over the balcony because of it.

Worth it.

____ -_ _ __ _ -_

 

Stefan noticed the new options as well.  
"Why is it happening?" He cried out one particularly stressful reality.

Colin flipped the page of his graphic novel, intending to ignore him. But a glance at Stefan made his stomach turn unusually. He was crying.

So Colin chose to stand up (poor other-reality Stefan where he chose to ignore him) and went to sit him down on the carpet. Held him there.

"Perhaps," he started quietly. "We are evolving."

Stefan sniffed. "Into what?"

"...something greater."

Stefan wiped his eyes and took a deep breath. Then he pulled back to smirk in Colin's face.

"Gods?"

Sigh. "Yes, Stefan. Gods."

Laughter.

\---___---__-_

Then they went to a playground. Colin obviously thought it was childish but was smiling nonetheless. Another new option.

And an impulse came to tackle Stefan to the woodchips after he flipped him off for something cryptic he'd said. They wrestled and kicked and eventually, Stefan somehow ended on top of Colin, breathing hard into his face.

Impulse. "Let's go to the pub," Stefan blurted out.

Colin smiled lazily at him with hooded eyes and broken glasses. 

"Sure."

\--______---------- --- -- - - -

...Stefan had a feeling he knew where this was going. It was just too cliché.

So, yeah, he drank a lot.

Colin watched him get drunker and drunker as he also got drunker and drunker. They didn't say anything. Words were mostly unnecessary between them at that point.

So when they got back to Colin's place (a Kitty-free timeline, lucky break) and Colin grabbed Stefan's wrists with a sudden and desperate movement, it wasn't surprising that it was a wordless exchange. Nothing was said as Stefan was pinned to the wall against a crinkling Akira poster and kissed, hard. A breathless moan, maybe. A growl in response. Panting, writhing, pulling.

The talking only came when Colin was deep, deep inside of him and it was no longer a choice for either of them. It was all fuck fuck yes please god yes fuck me fuck me love you love you spilling from their lips because, honestly, inhibition didn't exist anymore.

Afterward, when Colin was smoking a cigarette with Stefan tucked under his arm getting ashed on by accident (to which Colin smiled and blew off him apologetically) Stefan muttered that this was probably his favorite run so far.

Colin paused. Cocked an eyebrow at him. "Was this… your first time with me… like this?"

Stefan blinked at him. Ah.

Colin tousled his hair and pulled his earlobe. Leaned down to kiss him gently on the nose.

"Hope you're ready for a lot more, darling."

Forever didn't end up being so bad.

**Author's Note:**

> hope u enjoyed fellow weirdos. i am currently working on a choose ur own adventure bandersnatch ff. its gonna take forever since i obviously hhave to post all chaptersz at once. the whole enchilada. but uh. anticipate that. also lmk what u think thanks bb


End file.
